I Want Us to be Batman and Robin Forever
by CamsthiSky
Summary: While cleaning the attic, Bruce finds a letter written by a ten-year-old Dick, and Dick ends up thinking about the consequences of becoming Robin all those years ago. Day 5 of batfam week


"Hey, B," Dick said, a cheerful smile on his face as he pulled himself up the ladder and into the attic. "I heard you were looking for some slaves to help you clear out some boxes."

Bruce raised an eyebrow. "You offering?"

"Tim said he was bored," Dick said as he walked towards where Bruce was sitting in front of an open box, "and so I told him you wanted some help. His answer was a big fat no, so I figured I might as well give you a hand if he wouldn't, old man."

Bruce grunted, but didn't look up from the paper he seemed to be entranced with. Curious, Dick moved closer, crouching down right behind Bruce and squinting over his shoulder.

"What's that?"

"A letter." There was a smile in Bruce's voice, even if a glance at his face didn't show it.

"Right," Dick said, spotting a familiar signature at the bottom in familiar handwriting that Dick couldn't quite place. "But who's it—oh. _Oh._ Oh no."

This time, Bruce _did_ crack a smile. "Oh yes."

"Give me that," Dick demanded, grabbing at the letter, only for Bruce to snatch it away before he could get his hands on it. "Bruce, I'm serious!"

"You're too late," Bruce said, patting his shoulder. "I've already read it twice."

Dick stare at his father figure. "You're joking."

"I think it was sweet."

Dick groaned and sat his butt down on the dusty attic floor next to Bruce. "Where did you even _find_ that?"

Bruce gestured to the box. "When you left," the was a slight pause, and Bruce's smile faded into something sad and melancholy, and Dick stayed quiet. "When you left, Alfred was devastated. He packed up all of your things and put them in boxes. I guess this letter got packed up with your school books and essays."

Dick put his head in his hands. "It should never see the light of day, Bruce."

"Really?" And there was some miracle of teasing to Bruce's voice that Dick hadn't heard in a long time. "I think it would look nice in a frame, right above my desk in my office."

Dick _felt_ red. "Please, just burn it."

"Dick," Bruce said in a soft voice, and it wasn't playful anymore. He looked almost sad as he gazed down at the letter, eyes roving over the words again. "Did you really feel this way?"

He remembered what he wrote. He could remember it with startling clarity. He and Bruce had just gotten off a patrol and Dick had been _flying._ It had been a full year since he'd started field work with Bruce, and they'd had a good night. An Arkham breakout, and they'd recovered every single escapee that night.

Dick remembered how he'd felt when he'd finally gone to bed, tired but too pumped up to sleep. Dick had decided to write Bruce a letter for some reason that was lost to him now.

 _Thank you, Bruce,_ his ten-year-old self had started out. He'd told Bruce how grateful he was for taking him in, for being there when he was destined to drown in a Juvenile Detention Center, for letting him find a way to heal. He'd written a lot of things like that down, even detailing some of their adventures over the past year. He remembered exactly how he'd ended it, too. _Bruce, I want us to be Batman and Robin forever._

"I was really happy you took me in," Dick admitted. "You definitely weren't ready, and I knew that even back then, but you still tried, and that meant the world to me."

Bruce hummed. There was probably a million and one things Bruce wasn't saying, but Dick didn't press. Bruce wasn't a man of many words, and Dick was chatty. That's who they were, and Dick had accepted it a long time ago, before anything in life had gone sour besides his parents' deaths.

But things _had_ gone sour, some part of Dick's brain lamented. Things had gone to hell, and then Dick had given up Robin, and Bruce had taken it away from him like it was _his_ to give. Which it hadn't been. Robin had been Dick's mother's name for him, and he wondered, to this day, why Bruce hadn't given a single thought about giving it to Jason the first chance he got.

Dick didn't hate Bruce for it, not anymore, but he still wondered.

Since Bruce had passed it down, it seemed that Robin had become something to live up to. A title the kid wearing the costume had to measure up to. It was no longer the costume Dick had breathed life into, but something larger than him.

It was his legacy, he supposed. And it was his and Bruce's fault that it even existed in the first place.

Sometimes it left him breathless, how much he'd left behind for his little brothers to pick up. How much it seemed to mean to his family, to his city, when it had at first only meant something to _him._ It was so much, and sometimes it got to him, how much he and Bruce had messed up by letting Robin out in the first place.

"Dick? Bruce?" Stephanie called from the room below, her voice slightly muffled by the distance. "Tim says you guys are cleaning the attic."

Dick huffed a laugh. "Yeah. You wanna help?"

"I'll pass," Steph called. "Probably nothing but stuffy old boxes up there, anyways."

"And Dick's old school things," Bruce said, still reading over the letter like his life depended on it.

Dick gaped. "Bruce!"

"I'm framing it. She'll see it anyways."

"That's it," Dick said, reaching for the letter, even as Bruce pushed his face away and held the letter out to the other side so that Dick couldn't reach it. "Bruce, give it to me! Give it back. It's mine!"

"It's addressed to me, Dick," Bruce chuckled, "so I think that makes it mine!"

"What're you guys doing?" Stephanie asked, popping her head through the open hole in the floor. Her eyes zeroed in on the letter. "What's that?"

"Dick wrote me a letter when he was ten," Bruce explained, still pushing at Dick's face. "I'm framing it."

"You can't frame it!" Dick told him, finally relenting and pushing himself away from Bruce. Dick rubbed at his cheek, where Bruce had been pressing on his face. "It mentions Batman and Robin, and if you frame it and put it up at WE—what?"

Stephanie was staring at them, Dick realized. Or rather, Stephanie was staring at _him._ She looked a little confused and a little surprised, and Dick wasn't sure what he had done to warrant that reaction, seeing as she usually only reacted that way when Damian did something uncharacteristically nice for someone else.

"Nothing," Steph said. "I guess I just haven't seen you and Bruce talk like this in a while."

"We've all been a little stressed lately." Dick shrugged. It was true, too. Dick and Damian had done their best to be Batman and Robin while Bruce was traveling around the world, and before that, Bruce had been thought dead. There hadn't been much time to _talk like this_. To take some tension out of the air, Dick hid half his face behind his hand so that only Stephanie could see it, and mock whispered, "And between you and me, I think B's just been cranky because of all the jet lag."

"I don't have jet lag," Bruce immediately shot him down, shooting him a disapproving look, but Dick only grinned in response.

"Sure, Bruce," Dick said, shooting a wink at Stephanie. "Whatever you say."

Instead of getting strung along like Damian or maybe even Tim would have, Bruce just rolled his eyes. "If you want, I can have this hung up where all of the Justice League members can see it."

Dick's eyes widened. "Yeah, no, I'm good. Thanks anyways."

Stephanie laughed from where she was still pretty much just a head poking through the floor. "Okay, I've _got_ to see this letter. But _after_ we eat lunch. Which is why I came here in the first place. Alfred wants everyone at the table."

Dick brightened at the prospect of food and scampered over to Stephanie. "Yes, please."

"You've been here maybe all of five minutes," Bruce told him, carefully placing the letter back in the box. He followed Dick and Stephanie down the ladder. "All you did was pester me about that letter."

"So?"

Bruce sighed. "Never mind. Let's just go before Alfred gives us the Look."

Dick and Stephanie chatted happily all the way downstairs, Bruce occasionally chiming in here and there, and Dick's move was definitely a hundred times better than when he'd been thinking about all of the damage he had dealt by becoming Robin.

As they sat down—all of them. Bruce, Dick, Tim, Damian, Cass, and Steph—Dick thought that maybe his legacy could have done some good, after all. It had created a family, hadn't it?


End file.
